The ‘epidemic” of bedbugs have arrived in Greece too and forced the closure of a wing in a seaside hotel in capital Athens. The bedbugs were recently discovered by hotel cleaners.
The news was revealed by Giorgos Hotzoglou, the president of the food and tourism workers on Wednesday.
Speaking to Open TV, Hotzoglou said that the seaside hotel is located in the south suburbs of Athens, without revealing its name, though, and for obvious reasons.
Bedbugs in mattress – AP archive photo
He blamed tourists from France for the bedbugs in Athens he also spoke about the bed bug epidemic in France and England.
“Unfortunately we have an appearance of bedbugs. A hotel in the seaside suburb of Attica was forced to close a wing in order to carry out an insect control. I don’t know how effective this is, but among other problems there has been this too. It is clear that some of our guests, mainly from France, carried the insects and unfortunately they got stuck in the hotel, Hotzoglou said.
LiveNews magazine on Mega TV reported that there was panic in the hotel where mainly travelers from France stay when the bedbugs were discovered and that guests were transferred to other rooms.
The magazine had reportedly contacted the “big hotel in south-eastern Attica” on the issue and that the management dismissed the news about bedbugs.
Speaking to news website newsit.gr, Entomology Professor at the University of Thessaly and member of the Entomological Society of the USA, Christos Athanassiou, however, practically confirmed the news.
“We have always had incidents of bedbugs in hotels, it is nothing new. However, there has been an increase lately! I have received several phone calls from hotel managers in Athens and not only lately that they have found bedbugs in their rooms. Yesterday I received a call from a large hotel in the capital that was forced to close a wing because they were “attacked” by bedbugs,” Athanasiou said.
“There is a big problem with mattresses in hotels. In the army we burned them, but I don’t know how a hotel with such a problem can handle it. They have penetrated the mattresses and it is a cost to change a mattress in a room,” Hotzoglu stressed.
He noted that “large hotels periodically replace their mattresses. So far. there is one hotel with such a problem.”
According to Professor Athanasiou, “bedbugs do not live in the mattress, this is a big mistake that many people make. Bedbugs hide inside the bed frame, basically they are inside the side points on the bed frame and the headboard. This is why hotels no longer have bed frames or headboards.”